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arXiv:1301.4959 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Realizing non-Abelian gauge potentials in optical square lattices: an application to atomic Chern insulators

Nathan Goldman, Fabrice Gerbier, Maciej Lewenstein

Published Jun 24, 2013• 29 citations

Abstract

We describe a scheme to engineer non-Abelian gauge potentials on a square optical lattice using laser-induced transitions. We emphasize the case of two-electron atoms, where the electronic ground state g is laser-coupled to a metastable state e within a state-dependent optical lattice. In this scheme, the alternating pattern of lattice sites hosting g and e states depicts a chequerboard structure, allowing for laser-assisted tunnelling along both spatial directions. In this configuration, the nuclear spin of the atoms can be viewed as a ‘flavour’ quantum number undergoing non-Abelian tunnelling along nearest-neighbour links. We show that this technique can be useful to simulate the equivalent of the Haldane quantum Hall model using cold atoms trapped in square optical lattices, offering an interesting route to realize Chern insulators. The emblematic Haldane model is particularly suited to investigate the physics of topological insulators, but requires, in its original form, complex hopping terms beyond nearest-neighbouring sites. In general, this drawback inhibits a direct realization with cold atoms, using standard laser-induced tunnelling techniques. We demonstrate that a simple mapping allows us to express this model in terms of matrix hopping operators that are defined on a standard square lattice. This mapping is investigated for two models that lead to anomalous quantum Hall phases. We discuss the practical implementation of such models, exploiting laser-induced tunnelling methods applied to the chequerboard optical lattice.

DOI: 10.1088/0953-4075/46/13/134010

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We describe a scheme to engineer non-Abelian gauge potentials on a square optical lattice using laser-induced transitions. We emphasize the case of two-electron atoms, where the electronic ground state g is laser-coupled to a metastable state e within a state-dependent optical lattice. In this scheme, the alternating pattern of lattice sites hosting g and e states depicts a chequerboard structure, allowing for laser-assisted tunnelling along both spatial directions. In this configuration, the nuclear spin of the atoms can be viewed as a ‘flavour’ quantum number undergoing non-Abelian tunnelling along nearest-neighbour links. We show that this technique can be useful to simulate the equivalent of the Haldane quantum Hall model using cold atoms trapped in square optical lattices, offering an interesting route to realize Chern insulators. The emblematic Haldane model is particularly suited to investigate the physics of topological insulators, but requires, in its original form, complex hopping terms beyond nearest-neighbouring sites. In general, this drawback inhibits a direct realization with cold atoms, using standard laser-induced tunnelling techniques. We demonstrate that a simple mapping allows us to express this model in terms of matrix hopping operators that are defined on a standard square lattice. This mapping is investigated for two models that lead to anomalous quantum Hall phases. We discuss the practical implementation of such models, exploiting laser-induced tunnelling methods applied to the chequerboard optical lattice.

We introduce an explicit scheme to realize Chern insulating phases employing cold atoms trapped in a state-dependent optical lattice and laser-induced tunneling processes. The scheme uses two internal states, a ground state and a long-lived excited state, respectively trapped in separate triangular and honeycomb optical lattices. A resonant laser coherently coupling the two internal states enables hopping between the two sublattices with a Peierls-like phase factor. Although laser-induced hopping by itself does not lead to topological bands with nonzero Chern numbers, we find that such bands emerge when adding an auxiliary lattice that perturbs the lattice structure, effectively turning it at low energies into a realization of the Haldane model: a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice breaking time-reversal symmetry. We investigate the parameters of the resulting tight-binding model using first-principles band-structure calculations to estimate the relevant regime for experimental implementation.

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We propose feasible schemes to realize topological phases with cold atoms in momentum-space lattices through carefully engineering artificial gauge potentials for neutral atoms. We show a Floquet approach to design momentum-space lattices with long-range hoppings, which can be applicable to realize the momentum-space Haldane model. We further demonstrate the realization of the two-dimensioanl spin-orbit coupling for a spinful momentum-space lattices, arising from a general formulation of non-Abelian gauge potential. Then we give a minimal realization describing quantum anomalous Hall effect in a spin-orbit-coupling induced Chern insulator. We also provide three different dynamical approaches to extract topological properties of the proposed models. The numerical results show that our approaches are still valid even for a lattice with small size and in a short evolution time, thus making it feasible for realistic experiments.

We propose an experimental scheme to realize the quantum anomalous Hall effect in an anisotropic square optical lattice which can be generated from available experimental setups of double-well lattices with minor modifications. A periodic gauge potential induced by atom-light interaction is introduced to give a Peierls phase for the nearest-neighbor site hopping. The quantized anomalous Hall conductivity is investigated by calculating the Chern number as well as the chiral gapless edge states of our system. Furthermore, we show in detail the feasability for its experimental detection through light Bragg scattering of the edge and bulk states with which one can determine the topological phase transition from usual insulating phase to quantum anomalous Hall phase.

We study the transport of cold fermionic atoms trapped in optical lattices in the presence of artificial Abelian or non-Abelian gauge potentials. Such external potentials can be created in optical lattices in which atom tunneling is laser assisted and described by commutative or non-commutative tunneling operators. We show that the Hall-like transverse conductivity of such systems is quantized by relating the transverse conductivity to topological invariants known as Chern numbers. We show that this quantization is robust in non-Abelian potentials. The different integer values of this conductivity are explicitly computed for a specific non-Abelian system which leads to a fractal phase diagram.

We propose an experimental scheme to realize the valley-dependent gauge fields for ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in a state-dependent square optical lattice. Our scheme relies on two sets of Raman laser beams to engineer the hopping between adjacent sites populated by two-component fermionic atoms. One set of Raman beams is used to realize a staggered $\ensuremath{\pi}$-flux lattice, where low-energy atoms near two inequivalent Dirac points should be described by the Dirac equation for spin-

\frac{1}{2}

particles. Another set of laser beams with proper Rabi frequencies is added to further modulate the atomic hopping parameters. The hopping modulation will give rise to effective gauge potentials with opposite signs near the two valleys, mimicking the interesting strain-induced pseudogauge fields in graphene. The proposed valley-dependent gauge fields are tunable and provide an alternative route to realize an uncommon type of quantum Hall effects and atomic devices.